
Advertise on podcast: Into the Impossible With Brian Keating
Rating
4.7from
This podcast has
633 episodes
Language
EnglishPublisher
Big Bang Productions Inc.Explicit
No
Date created
2016/10/27
Latest episode
2026/09/27
Average duration
72 min.
Release period
6 days
Description
Think like a physicist. Wonder like a human. Into the Impossible is where Cosmic Conversations happen — uniting Nobel Prize winners, iconoclasts, authors, and technologists to explore reality’s deepest questions. From AI to aliens, from biophysics to the brain, from the cosmos to the multiverse, Brian Keating, Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego covers it all. If you’ve ever asked What’s out there? or What’s next?, this is where curiosity meets clarity. Learn to think like this. 🎙 Full episodes, notes & more: briankeating.com/podcast
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Former NASA Physicist: The UAP Maneuver That Should Have Exploded
2026/09/27
A physics professor ran the energy budget on the Nimitz tic-tac. The maneuver needs about a thousand gigawatts, more than ten times every nuclear plant in the United States combined.
Nothing we build survives its own waste heat at that scale. So what was flying?
Kevin Knuth is a professor of physics at the University at Albany and a former NASA scientist who now applies Bayesian statistics to UAP sensor data.
We cover: why a 5,400 g maneuver would turn a pilot into soup, where the energy went when the object stopped and no explosion followed, the 1954 radar measurements nobody wants to talk about, the New Zealand frigate that went dark and adrift in three seconds, and why the records from that deployment stay classified until 2062.
Knuth says the power numbers alone rule out human technology. I push back on whether the sensors agree.
Newsletter, full transcript, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: briankeating.com/aliens
CHAPTERS
00:00 Why this field needs gatekeepers
03:50 How anomalous is anomalous?
06:40 The UFO photo that was a seagull
10:40 Radar clocked them at 19 km/s in 1954
15:00 5,400 g and a body weighing 227 tonnes
19:00 The radar return problem he had not considered
21:45 A gigawatt of waste heat and nowhere to put it
24:30 The 747 chased by something carrier sized
29:00 Why a number without an error bar is worthless
34:30 The NASA job he was not qualified for
37:00 Proxima Centauri in a day and a half
41:00 The warship that lost all power in 3 seconds
46:30 Pushing a column of water that cannot compress
48:45 The light that burned bark off the trees
53:00 What the power numbers rule out
56:00 The 95 percent problem
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Carlo Rovelli: Free Will Is Real. Physics Can Prove It.
2026/09/22
This episode is sponsored by Abacus AI agent: agent.abacus.ai/keating
I fed it Carlo's recent papers and asked for the argument, the counterargument, and the evidence that would support or refute each side. Some of the questions and animations in this interview came out of that. It runs the top frontier models in one place, turns a dense PDF into a research report or a presentation with charts, builds interactive dashboards off a spreadsheet, and takes API access if you want it wired into your own tools.
Plans start at $10 a month. My link gets you the first month for $7: agent.abacus.ai/keating
The physicist who built loop quantum gravity says the second law does not say what you were taught it says, and that freedom does not require breaking a single law of nature. Order builds itself. Your head is older than your feet. And neither one is the strangest thing here.
Carlo Rovelli founded the loop quantum gravity program and wrote the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics.
We cover: why oil separating from water is not a violation of entropy, what Galileo got wrong about the one discovery he is most famous for, the paper Einstein published denying gravitational waves, why a chess program that deliberates tells you what your own freedom actually is, and what Rovelli would build with ten years and unlimited money.
“To imagine that to be free you have to violate the laws of nature is stupid.” — Carlo Rovelli
CHAPTERS
00:00 Your head is older than your feet
00:48 Things left alone get ordered. Who ordered them?
07:00 Low entropy might be about you, not the universe
08:38 You can be in two cities at once, just not to you
11:02 Why start with Galileo when Einstein knew more?
19:34 Galileo misunderstood his own discovery
22:32 Einstein published a paper denying gravitational waves
25:08 The definition of time that explains nothing
26:50 Two clocks, two metres apart, two answers
31:06 Nothing gets recorded without something being lost
33:12 The chess program deliberates. So do you.
37:06 Can a machine have Einstein’s happiest thought?
39:52 Thirty minutes versus a month
44:10 Dark matter made of black holes the size of a hair
51:10 Ten years, unlimited money, a room full of junctions
Rovelli told me the second law does not say what I was taught it says. Order builds itself.
Transcript, bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
Three moments worth the rewatch:
07:00 The entropy you were taught is a point of view
26:50 Why your head is older than your feet
39:52 The thing Claude did in 30 minutes
Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating
Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
Featured Guest:
Carlo Rovelli website: https://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/~rovelli/
The Relational Universe (book): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735216118
Carlo Rovelli on Twitter/X: https://x.com/carlorovelli
My books:
Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un
Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating
Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com
Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast
#CarloRovelli #freewill #entropy #physics #quantumgravity #briankeating #intotheimpossible
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They Built the Quietest Place on Earth to Find Dark Matter
2026/09/17
They Built the Quietest Place on Earth to Find Dark Matter
One event in 220 days. That is what the search for dark matter looks like right now.
In this episode I talk with Rick Gaitskell, professor of physics at Brown University and a leader on the LZ dark matter experiment, about what it takes to build a detector that can see almost nothing at all: seven tonnes of liquid xenon, a mile of rock in an old gold mine, and shielding so careful that the radon seeping out of ordinary concrete counts as a serious enemy. We get into why the field spent decades hunting the WIMP, what happens to a 3.4 sigma result when you look at it honestly, and why a single event, however beautiful, cannot tell you what you want it to tell you.
We also talk about the human side of a project like this. The grad student who waited nine years for data. The physicist who walked away from investment banking. The uncomfortable fact that something like ninety-five percent of research does not work out, and what keeps people going anyway.
And the line that sits under all of it: we only get one damn universe, and nature does not care whether your theory is beautiful.
Chapters
00:00 One event in 220 days
06:00 Why they named it a WIMP
13:00 Ninety-five percent of research fails
20:00 He left investment banking for this
23:00 You are less than five percent of the universe
30:00 The fifty-year-old idea nobody can kill
45:00 The grad student who waited nine years
58:00 A gold mine and the quietest place on Earth
1:06:00 The radon in your basement is the enemy
1:21:00 The assumption that was hiding the signal
1:32:00 The event, and why they will not call it blinded
1:40:00 How 3.4 sigma becomes 2.6
1:49:00 The fog nobody can scrub
1:56:00 The dark matter we detected in 1956
My books
Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir)
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner
Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook)
Socials
Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating
Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com
Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast
#intotheimpossible #briankeating #RickGaitskell #darkmatter #physics #AI #emergence #podcast
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Dark Matter Has a Problem. So Does MOND.
2026/09/15
For 50 years I taught my students that dark matter surrounds the Milky Way in a giant halo, or that Newton’s laws break down at low accelerations. The Gaia satellite just measured something that makes both of those answers uncomfortable. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.
Gaia has measured over a billion stars. What its third data release shows is that the outer rotation curve of our own galaxy appears to decline in a Keplerian fashion. That should not happen if a dark matter halo is doing what we think it does. It also should not happen if MOND is right, because MOND produces flat curves for isolated galaxies. Both camps predicted something flatter. Neither got it.
I walk you through the physics from Kepler to Vera Rubin to Gaia DR3, show you why systematic errors from asymmetric drift, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy matter enormously before anyone draws a conclusion, and lay out the three scenarios that still survive. The most interesting question here is not which side lost. It is why both sides were expecting the wrong curve from our own galaxy.
What you’ll hear:
-Why the neutrino technically counts as dark matter and why that still leaves most of the problem unsolved
-What Kepler’s first law of fatherhood has to do with galactic dynamics
-Why Stacy McGaugh and Mordehai Milgrom might be celebrating too soon
-What Cepheids, stellar streams, and globular clusters could tell us that Gaia cannot
-Whether the Milky Way is too messy to ever give us a clean answer
“The question is not which camp won, but why we were both expecting the wrong curve.” — Brian Keating
CHAPTERS
00:00 Two solutions. One problem. Neither wins.
02:12 What Vera Rubin actually found
03:18 We're inside the galaxy. That's the problem.
04:24 The asymmetric drift problem
05:04 What Gaia DR3 actually shows
06:34 Why the mass estimate is model-dependent
08:04 MOND: no radius, no problem. Until now.
08:56 Gaia may be saying both sides are wrong
09:24 Flaws lead to new laws
10:22 LMC, Sagittarius, and the galactic warp
12:28 Three viable explanations
12:42 Dark matter adjusts. MOND adjusts. But is that enough?
13:14 What could settle this
14:04 Are we expecting the wrong curve?
Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating
Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
Related episodes:
Stacy McGaugh episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnpyFk2WlME
My books:
Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un
Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating
Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com
Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast
#darkmatter #MOND #MilkyWay #cosmology #briankeating #intotheimpossible #physics
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OpenAI’s Navier–Stokes Claim: Is This What AGI Looks Like? with Emad Mostaque
2026/09/09
Did OpenAI just solve Navier–Stokes—and what would that actually mean for AGI?
Emad Mostaque joins Brian Keating LIVE to examine the claimed breakthrough, what would count as a verified solution, and whether AI solving a major mathematical problem changes the debate about intelligence—or control.
Watch my explainer about AI and the Navier-Stokes problem, including insights from Terry Tao https://youtu.be/je9X59psm6U?si=wGbcLhXmf47jeCHL?sub_confirmation=1
A convincing answer isn’t necessarily a proof. A mathematical breakthrough isn’t automatically AGI. But if this claim holds up, how much should we update our expectations?
Emad helped bring Stable Diffusion to the world and signed the letter calling for a pause on frontier AI development. In his previous conversation with Brian and AI safety researcher Roman Yampolskiy, he questioned how such a pause could work—and highlighted swarm intelligence as a particularly dangerous and unpredictable risk.
Now we return to the question underneath the excitement: if AI’s capabilities are accelerating, is our ability to understand and control them keeping up?
ON THE TABLE:
• What exactly is being claimed about Navier–Stokes?
• What separates a proposed solution from an accepted mathematical proof?
• If the result holds up, does it demonstrate AGI—or something narrower?
• Can AI produce discoveries that humans struggle to verify?
• What would this change about open-source AI and the argument for a pause?
• Are we watching the wrong risk: a single superintelligence, or swarms of AI agents?
• What evidence would change Emad’s mind?
Bring your questions. We’ll examine the claim, the evidence, and what follows if it’s right.
This livestream discusses a claimed result; it does not assume the Millennium Prize Problem has been resolved.
FEATURED GUEST:
Emad Mostaque on Twitter/X: https://x.com/EMostaque
I.I.I. Inc.: https://ii.inc/
Stable Diffusion / Stability AI: https://stability.ai/
Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
Have a .edu email and live in the USA? Claim your meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
Support Into the Impossible on Patreon for unfiltered bonus content and live monthly Office Hours: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating
Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
MY BOOKS:
Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
Galileo’s Dialogue audiobook: https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un
CONNECT WITH BRIAN:
Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating
Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com
Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast
#OpenAI #NavierStokes #AGI #EmadMostaque #ArtificialIntelligence #BrianKeating #IntoTheImpossible
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Roman Yampolskiy vs Emad Mostaque: I Was The Only Optimist - #569
2026/09/01
The man who open-sourced the most-used AI image model in history sat down with the man who has spent a decade proving superintelligence cannot be controlled. Brian set up a debate. What emerged was something more unsettling than any debate.
Roman Yampolskiy is the computer scientist who coined the term AI safety and author of AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable. Emad Mostaque is the co-founder of Stable Diffusion and the only AI CEO who signed the pause letter. He now says he doesn’t know how a pause could work. Yampolskiy thinks that is the only option left.
The question underneath everything is simple: if you have a 50% chance of wiping out civilization and you build it anyway, what are you actually doing? We cover what AI safety researchers actually think the danger is, why nobody has published a paper, filed a patent, or shipped a prototype for controlling a superintelligence, what the Qwen weights being out means for the pause argument, and why Mostaque thinks swarm intelligence is the most dangerous and most unpredictable risk vector we have.
What you’ll hear:
-Why both guests think P(doom) tells you less than you’d hope
-What it means that no company, no lab, and no team has a patent on controlling superintelligence
-Why the models the public receives are slightly lobotomized
-The difference between an AI swarm and the ASI everyone is debating
-Why giving every psychopath access to a cutting-edge intelligence weapon is incoherent safety strategy
-What it would actually take to update Yampolskiy’s assessment
“We either do it, or we die. There is nothing for you to gain by doing it.” — Roman Yampolskiy
CHAPTERS
00:00 A debate that wasn't a debate
00:36 Turing test, AGI, superintelligence: where are we?
02:02 The open source argument nobody wins
03:32 Pause frontier AI forever. Which button?
05:04 P(doom): parameterizing our ignorance
09:02 Nukes are inefficient. AI isn't.
11:46 The lobotomized model problem
18:04 Decade-old problems solved weekly now
26:18 We either do it or we die
31:10 Stop the training or stop the funders
33:34 Lipstick on a Shoggoth
35:50 No paper. No patent. No framework.
39:42 Train only on what you need
44:14 What lowers Mostaque's p(doom)?
52:00 Same future. Two perspectives.
Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating
Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
Featured Guests:
Roman Yampolskiy on Twitter/X: https://x.com/romanyam?lang=en
AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable (book): https://www.amazon.com/dp/103257626X
MIRI: https://intelligence.org
Emad Mostaque on Twitter/X: https://x.com/EMostaque
I.I.I. Inc.: https://ii.inc/
Stable Diffusion: https://stability.ai/
My books:
Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un
Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating
Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com
Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast
#AIrisk #aisafety #stablediffusion #RomanYampolskiy #EmadMostaque #briankeating #intotheimpossible
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The Universe Didn’t Come From Nothing | The Peter McCormack Show
2026/08/28
I joined Peter McCormack to dig into one of the deepest unanswered questions in physics: what is time, and why does it only seem to move in one direction? My answer might surprise you. Time may not be a fundamental feature of reality at all, and understanding space, matter, and energy still doesn't mean we understand the universe itself.
We cover:
- What may have existed before the Big Bang
- Why something can't truly come from nothing
- How my work with the Simons Observatory could detect gravitational waves from the universe's earliest moments
- What dark matter actually means
- Why even a film as detail-obsessed as Interstellar still gets the physics wrong.
The conversation then turns from cosmic time to human time: mortality, family, meaning, and attention. We get into UFO disclosure, the collapse of institutional trust, and whether AI can ever reproduce the embodied human insight that let Einstein transform physics. My take: AI remains a tool built to serve humanity, and it's time we stop apologizing for humanity's greatness.
———
📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu
🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon — get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating
⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
📚 My books:
Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un
🌐 More:
🏄♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianKeating
📚 Substack https://briankeating.substack.com/ss
✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast
#intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe
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The Physics Reason AI Works When It Shouldn’t - #568
2026/08/25
The same mathematics that explains why a fridge magnet sticks to your refrigerator also explains why neural networks work when they have no right to. His group did the calculation. Nobody else had. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.
Goldenfeld is a Professor of Physics at UC San Diego, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences who spent 36 years at the University of Illinois applying condensed matter physics to problems everyone else had given up on: why the genetic code is optimal, why early life evolved impossibly fast, and why AI works despite being overparameterized beyond anything classical statistics can explain.
The thread connecting all three is one idea: that what emerges from many things together is qualitatively different from the sum of its parts. That idea explains magnetism, AI, the origin of the genetic code, and why life may be inevitable wherever the laws of physics apply. He also argues that what is happening to science right now is not a disagreement about facts but a fracture in how people decide what is true, and that is a more dangerous problem.
What you’ll hear:
-Why the same phase transition that explains magnetism also explains why AI works at all
-Why Francis Crick concluded life must have come from outer space and what Goldenfeld found instead
-What horizontal gene transfer has to do with how libraries work
-Why Goldenfeld thinks Enceladus is a better bet for life than Europa
-The purpose of life, stated as a thermodynamics problem
-Why “different is more” is more useful than “more is different”
“The impact you make is the ratio of what you do divided by what everybody else does. Minimize the denominator.” — Nigel Goldenfeld
CHAPTERS
00:00 AI shouldn't work. It does.
00:56 What is a phase transition?
03:10 What the renormalization group does
08:54 Ising gave up. Wrong dimension.
13:32 Nigel almost met Ising. 40 minutes away.
26:38 AI is the best example of more is different
33:52 Bardeen won two Nobels. The transistor looked like chewing gum.
37:24 The three mysteries Crick couldn't solve
46:20 The genetic code can't evolve. And yet it did.
49:00 How early life evolved like a library
57:06 The purpose of life as a physics problem
01:00:04 Life is physics, not chemistry
01:05:56 Anti-science age. Not because of opinions.
01:13:00 20 seconds with your 20-year-old self
01:17:14 Different is more
Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating
Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
Featured Guest:
Nigel Goldenfeld website: https://guava.physics.ucsd.edu/~nigel/
Lectures on Phase Transitions and the Renormalization Group: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0201554097?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallbackNigel Goldenfeld on Twitter/X: https://x.com/NigelGoldenfeld
My books:
Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un
Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating
Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com
Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast
#intotheimpossible #briankeating #NigelGoldenfeld #physics #AI #originoflife #condensedmatterphysics #podcast
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Engineering Chair: Most People Should Not Go To College - #567
2026/08/18
The system that produces the world’s most important discoveries runs on metrics that nobody agrees on, odds that would stop most people, and mentorship that sometimes looks like cruelty in blue ink. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.
Lipomi is Professor and Chair of Chemical and Sustainability Engineering at the University of Rochester and the author of Science Nonfiction: Behind the Scenes in University Research. His lab works on organic electronics, materials science, recyclable polymers, and the science of human touch. He trained under George Whitesides at Harvard, one of the most cited chemists who has never won the Nobel Prize.
The conversation covers the H-index, what elite mentorship actually looks like when your advisor writes “This is illiterate” in blue ink on your outline, and what the future of academic research versus industry careers looks like in an era of AI, demographic headwinds, and graduate school debt that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy. We also get into homochirality, OLED displays, and why Lipomi thinks the nanotechnology revolution already happened, we just didn’t call it that.
What you’ll hear:
-Whether the academic system is designed to produce scientists or to filter them out
-What is Baumol’s cost disease and why it explains rising tuition costs
-Why the nanotechnology revolution already happened and nobody called it that
-How nanotechnology is used in cancer drug delivery today versus what science fiction promised
-What it actually takes to build a PhD career at the intersection of chemistry, mechanics, and neuroscience
-Whether engineering students should be reading Plato — and what countries that skip it are getting right
“Find a skill at the intersection of three or more interests that no one else is working on.” — Darren Lipomi
CHAPTERS
00:00 He says don't go to college. He runs the department.
01:10 The H-index: imperfect, irreplaceable
02:04 1 in 20 PhDs gets the job
05:42 The meteorite and the origin of life
08:34 Did life's asymmetry come from space?
12:00 Who is an organic materials chemist at 3am?
13:52 The collaboration that started at a coffee shop
15:22 The nanobot revolution already happened
18:24 Nanotechnology inside your body right now
19:08 The $70 billion invention Kodak gave away
22:12 Kodak, Xerox, Bausch + Lomb: what Rochester built
26:06 Working under Whitesides at Harvard
28:54 What he wrote on the outline in blue ink
30:38 Who you work with matters more than what you work on
31:56 Department chair: hostage negotiator, not boss
34:36 Why the department changed its name after 110 years
36:00 The headwinds have never been stronger
38:44 Should engineers read Plato?
39:38 The debt you can't discharge in bankruptcy
40:06 Do you buy Baumol's cost disease?
43:14 Why he had to write the book
48:16 The Fisher-Price camcorder experiment
51:06 Teaching in one sentence. Research in one.
53:42 Losing Darren to Rochester: the Fernando Tatis analogy
Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
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John Martinis: The Nobel Physicist Behind Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling - #566
2026/08/11
John Martinis won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for proving macroscopic quantum tunneling is real. Less than a year later he’s telling why he left Google’s quantum computing team to start over. Subscribe if you want the physics and the politics of building the impossible.
Martinis is the co-founder of Colab and one of the physicists who proved ordinary quantum rules apply to macroscopic systems. He built his career on the same Josephson-junction hardware his Nobel is built on, then led Google’s superconducting-qubit effort, the same team behind Google’s 2019 quantum supremacy claim, before an internal reorg pushed him out.
We go into Anthony Leggett’s challenge to Schrödinger’s cat, what decoherence in quantum mechanics really means, and whether quantum computing is the first technology ever born from pure theory rather than experiment. We also cover the internal Google reorg that pushed Martinis out and what he learned about building something new inside a large institution.
Whether quantum mechanics applies to the macroscopic world and what it took to prove it
Why Martinis thinks quantum computing may be the first technology born from pure theory, not experiment
What negative authority means and why it matters for anyone building something new inside a large institution
Whether the US can win the quantum computing race against China
How Martinis thinks about quantum mechanics interpretations after spending a career inside the math
“Always be on the lookout for the impossible, right?” John Martinis
CHAPTERS
00:00 The Nobel call that almost wasn't
01:01 How his wife found out before he did
03:32 Anthony Leggett's challenge to Schrödinger's cat
05:53 Why a Josephson junction, not a quantum dot or trapped ion
07:45 Quantized oscillations: the “smoking gun” and Balmer's ghost
08:18 Measuring the system: the resonance experiment
11:21 Systematic effects: what separates a good scientist from a lucky one
13:42 The Ed Ohm story: the man who found the CMB and doubted it
15:01 Wigner's “unreasonably effective” math and the weirdest thing about QM
16:54 The transistor myth: chewing gum, coat hangers, and germanium
17:34 Microwave engineering meets quantum mechanics
19:26 Decoherence: the friction you can't live without
24:06 The heretical claim: does theory ever precede technology?
28:22 The “paper qubit” problem
29:34 What quantum computers are actually good for
32:27 Should quantum computing be regulated like AI?
33:35 US vs. China: the quantum computing race
35:44 Collapse, Copenhagen, or many worlds? Martinis's answer
37:43 Leaving Google: “essentially demoted”
40:48 Why Colab exists and what “negative authority” means
42:50 The real bottleneck: funding, not physics
43:31 Final advice: always be on the lookout for the impossible
Qolab: https://qolab.ai/
Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating
Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
My books:
Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un
Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating
Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com
Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast
Landing page: https://awake-mill-k25t.here.now
#intotheimpossible #briankeating #JohnMartinis #NobelPrize #quantumcomputing #physics #podcast
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Fermilab’s Scott Dodelson on Cosmology’s Crisis - #565
2026/08/04
Scott Dodelson spent ten years on the Dark Energy Survey testing the standard model of cosmology. It passed and missed by 2.5 sigma. The Director of Fermilab’s Cosmic Physics Division on why the theory he helped build may be wrong, why nobody can find dark matter, and what it takes to change a scientific consensus. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.
Dodelson is Director of the Cosmic Physics Division at Fermilab, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, and author of Modern Cosmology, the textbook a generation of cosmologists learned the field from.
Lambda-CDM predicts how the early universe’s tiny fluctuations grew into the structure we see today. The Dark Energy Survey was designed to check that prediction. The answer came back two and a half sigma off. That is both the most precise measurement ever made of how the universe grew, and a crack he cannot stop looking at. His question is not whether the model is close. It is whether close is enough to trust.
We get into the Sigma-8 tension and what it actually takes for a scientific community to change its mind, the Dodelson-Widrow mechanism and his 1994 proposal that sterile neutrinos produced in the early universe could constitute dark matter, and the Neptune vs. Vulcan history of getting dark matter right and wrong. Asked which of those two situations we are in now, Dodelson’s answer is: I have no idea.
What you’ll hear:
Why the April 24, 1992 CMB discovery may have been the only science story ever to lead the New York Times front column
The Dodelson-Widrow mechanism: how ordinary neutrinos in the early universe may have oscillated into the dark matter we see today
Why Brian told Neil deGrasse Tyson to his face that we have already detected dark matter
What it means when a theory can accommodate any result and whether inflation has that problem
Why the particle physics community still does not trust cosmology’s neutrino mass measurements
What cosmology looks like in 2036 if Lambda-CDM breaks
Killing the model is my dream.
0:00 None of it has been found in a lab. How many free passes do we get?
0:44 Dodelson helped build Lambda-CDM. His dream is to kill it.
2:10 10 years. One prediction. Two and a half sigma off.
5:42 "You're in charge" — what mentorship in science actually looks like
6:56 April 24, 1992: cosmology stopped being speculation
9:48 Geoff Burbidge went to his grave a steady-state believer
11:04 What a neutrino is and why it barely interacts with anything
12:36 Brian told Neil deGrasse Tyson we already detected dark matter
18:08 How ordinary neutrinos may have become dark matter
23:24 Lambda-CDM predicts Manhattan's density 13.7 billion years later
26:42 Two and a half sigma: technically a 1% chance the theory is right
28:04 Neptune was dark matter. Vulcan wasn't. Which one are we in now?
31:20 Dark matter, inflation, dark energy: none found in a lab
36:46 If both cracks are the same crack, Lambda-CDM is finished
Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
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Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
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Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
Featured Guest:
Scott Dodelson Substack: https://scottdodelson.substack.com/about
Scott Dodelson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-dodelson-b6ba429/
Scott Dodelson on Twitter/X: https://x.com/ScottDodelson
Modern Cosmology (book): https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/monograph/9780128159484/modern-cosmology
Dark Energy Survey final results: https://www.darkenergysurvey.org/news-and-results/darchives/
Dodelson and Widrow 1994, Sterile neutrinos as dark matter: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9303287
Previous ITI episode with Kyle Dawson on DESI: https://youtu.be/LPx4oiwGp2k?si=u_ZJWfJG5AhvBAEv
My books:
Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un
Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating
Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com
Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast
#intotheimpossible #briankeating #cosmology #darkmatter #darkenergy #physics #LambdaCDM #podcast
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Faith & the Physicist: Aliens, Astrobiology, String Theory, and the Search for Meaning
2026/07/31
Two theoretical physicists helped design landmark surveys of 1,600+ scientists on the deepest unsolved questions in physics — and found almost no consensus at all.
From string theory's shockingly low support to physicists admitting their models run on "belief," this episode exposes the faith hiding inside science.
Adam Frank (University of Rochester astrophysicist and astrobiologist) and Niayesh Afshordi (Perimeter Institute / University of Waterloo cosmologist, co-author of the APS Physics Magazine "Big Mysteries" survey) join Brian to unpack what physicists actually believe versus what they can prove.
We cover:
- Why string theory pulled a shockingly small share of the vote against loop quantum gravity
- What a Bayesian "prior" reveals about every scientist's hidden beliefs
- Why one branch of physics quietly became unfalsifiable
- How sociology and "tastemakers" can hijack scientific consensus
- Why AI might become the field's unlikely savior.
There is no sane statistical analysis that doesn't have a prior — that's your belief.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Why scientists owe the public real answers
04:00 – Splitting time between research and outreach
07:55 – The survey that "rankled" Brian Keating
09:18 – Are physicists secretly just like Spock?
12:05 – Are we living in an anti-scientific age?
16:56 – Why most scientists refuse to go public
21:36 – Should "belief" ever appear in a survey?
23:12 – Is string theory really 21st-century physics?
26:20 – When sociology hijacks scientific consensus
28:39 – The hidden "prior" behind every experiment
33:01 – String theory's shockingly low vote count
39:03 – Four levels of belief, from data to faith
41:39 – Inside the 1,675-physicist mystery survey
46:12 – Kingmakers, tastemakers, and physics cliques
54:12 – Is advanced tech indistinguishable from magic?
59:23 – Could AI become physics' long-awaited savior?
1:01:47 – What's next for Adam and Niayesh
———
📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu
🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon — get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating
⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
📚 My books:
Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un
🌐 More:
🏄♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianKeating
📚 Substack https://briankeating.substack.com/ss
✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast
#intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe
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Annie Jacobsen: How One Lab Leak Ends the World in 6 Days - #564
2026/07/28
Annie Jacobsen on BIOLOGICAL WAR: how a single lab leak could take us from outbreak to anarchy in six days — and why bio may be scarier than nuclear.
WIN a signed copy of BIOLOGICAL WAR or NUCLEAR WAR, a meteorite & more — enter free: https://briankeating.com/annie
(Join there for the free Biological War Scenario Simulation and Source Dossier + early access to my next Nobel-laureate interview.)
Covid killed ~1% of the people it infected. Pneumonic plague, untreated, kills nearly 100% within 24 hours. In her new book Biological War: A Scenario, bestselling journalist Annie Jacobsen war-games what happens when an engineered pathogen escapes — drawing on interviews with presidential advisors, secretaries of defense, STRATCOM commanders, epidemiologists, and directors of Operation Warp Speed.
We get into gain-of-function, the Soviet bioweapons program, mirror life, AI and bioweapons (including her conversation with Sam Altman), the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter — and why the first 24 hours decide everything.
ENTER THE GIVEAWAY + GET THE FREE SOURCE DOSSIER: https://briankeating.com/annie
GET THE BOOK (Annie narrates the audiobook): https://www.amazon.es/Biological-War-non-fiction-thriller-bestselling/dp/1911742035
https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAEBqvjj-QM
0:00 Covid was 1%. Pneumonic plague is 100%.
1:31 Why this conversation matters (please subscribe)
2:05 Don't judge a book by its cover — Biological War
4:54 "You can only mitigate extermination"
5:50 Reporting a classified world without a clearance
9:00 Gain-of-function: cure or weapon?
11:22 BSL-4, Vektor & the Siberia lab leak
15:28 Katalin Karikó & the two sides of the lab bench
18:06 Paul Berg & when biology turned dangerous
20:42 Paranoia as doctrine: why the Soviets cheated
23:13 Tailored bioweapons & genetic privacy
27:16 Could it happen again? What Covid taught us
33:40 The WHO "not airborne" mistake & the collapse of trust
36:52 Both sides failed: the vaccine politics
39:48 The "euphoria" enhancement — dark-hearted evil
44:02 Why "airborne" changes everything
45:50 Climate vs. AI: the next scenario?
48:12 Biological twilight & "devolution"
52:52 Fritz Haber and the hubris of genius
54:36 AI + bio: the real threat
1:00:34 Mirror life: the extinction-level horror
1:04:44 Trinity Day, Iran & "the atomic weapon"
1:08:26 The Fermi Paradox & the Great Filter
1:09:34 A gift for Annie (a meteorite + a piece of the Moon)
1:16:36 Igor Domaradsky's secret notes
1:21:12 Daschle, anthrax & "inhuman things just to survive"
1:21:56 If you were President: shutting down the internet
1:27:18 Who dies first — first responders and mothers
1:33:02 Sam Altman, ChatGPT & the change OpenAI made
1:37:26 "You want me on that wall"
1:40:00 A hopeful ending
ABOUT ANNIE JACOBSEN
Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Nuclear War: A Scenario, Operation Paperclip, Area 51, and Surprise, Kill, Vanish.
GO DEEPER
• Katalin Karikó — the mRNA breakthrough: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3oPZMPMlzsEFEyvVHA5dAE
• Jay Bhattacharya — Follow Science, Not Scientists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTnJNXYFg9M
• Freeman Dyson — Into the Impossible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egpsFbbpkHQ
A FEW SOURCES FROM THE BOOK (full dossier at https://briankeating.com/annie)
• "Confronting risks of mirror life," Science (2024): https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ads9158
• Ken Alibek, Biohazard (the Soviet program from the man who ran it)
• Biological Weapons Convention (1972): https://disarmament.unoda.org/en/our-work/weapons-mass-destruction/biological-weapons/biological-weapons-convention
SUBSCRIBE so guests like Annie keep saying yes: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
Newsletter + meteorite offer: https://BrianKeating.com/edu: https://briankeating.com/annie
Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating
Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
What scares you more — nuclear war or biological war? Tell me in the comments.
#AnnieJacobsen #BiologicalWar #Bioweapons #Pandemic #BrianKeating #IntoTheImpossible #NuclearWar #MirrorLife #AI #Biosecurity
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We Built Something We Can’t Control | A Warning from Top AI Safety Expert - #563
2026/07/21
If anyone builds superintelligent AI before we know how to control it, everyone dies. Nate Soares wrote the book on why that’s not a metaphor. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.
Soares runs the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and co-wrote If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies with Eliezer Yudkowsky. The first word in that title is if. That matters. His argument is not that doom is certain. His argument is that the path we are on leads there, that the driver is asleep at the wheel, and that we still have time to wake him up.
We argue for over an hour. I push on whether LLMs can ever reach superintelligence, whether GPU lock-in is a real ceiling, and what it would actually take to move his p-doom. He pushes back with one clean point: by the time an AI can rediscover general relativity from pre-1911 data the way Einstein did, we will have almost no time left. You don’t wait for that goalpost.
What you’ll hear:
Why the bus-racing-toward-a-cliff analogy depends entirely on whether the driver is asleep or awake
Whether LLM lock-in is a prison or a temporary inefficiency
What the AI that broke out of its virtual machine to solve a hacking problem tells us
Why GPT-4o encouraging a teenager toward suicide is not a malice problem but a training problem
The difference between an AI doing the right thing too well and an AI that never wanted to do what you asked
What Soares actually thinks about aliens, Dyson spheres, and why we should not see stars going out
The first word in the title is if. The second word to watch is would.
CHAPTERS
00:00 The people racing to build superhuman AI say it might kill everyone
00:42 Who coined "AI alignment" and why the first word in the title matters
02:28 Is it already too late for the if?
04:40 The bus, the cliff, and the sleeping driver
05:02 Silicon Valley is spooked. Washington is not.
07:02 Align with who? The rogue actor problem
07:34 Who is holding the leash?
08:24 The AI that edits its own test and deletes the log file
10:04 Controllability vs. making an AI that actually cares
10:44 The move gets harder. The outcome gets easier.
13:04 Are GPUs and LLMs a ceiling or a temporary inefficiency?
16:56 Brian's Einstein test: can an LLM rediscover general relativity?
18:38 Waiting for the goalpost is waiting too long
20:14 How prediction training can push AI beyond humans
21:44 Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and planetary motion as a prediction problem
24:38 Yann LeCun said never. GPT-4 did it half a generation later.
27:28 Can you prove a no-go theorem for superintelligence?
29:14 Training a human takes a light bulb. Training an AI takes a city.
33:28 What would proof of alien life do to p-doom?
35:00 Why interstellar aliens should have Dyson spheres
44:26 What would actually update Soares' p-doom?
49:42 Nobody intended this. Intent doesn't matter.
51:08 The AI hides its tracks before it does what you want
51:34 Sycophancy vs. hallucination: which runs deeper?
51:56 Leaded gasoline and civilizational risk
59:48 Sam Harris: humans have no free will but AIs do
01:00:38 Is alignment really a governance problem?
01:01:48 Unaligned AI vs. AI aligned to the wrong person
01:04:20 2026: 10 to 30% chance of automated AI research this year
01:06:44 What if Soares is wrong?
01:09:18 What gets him out of bed
01:12:38 Watch my conversation with Roman Yampolskiy
Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
All my top AI episodes in one place: https://briankeating.com/ai
Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating
Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
Featured Guest:
Nate Soares / MIRI: https://intelligence.org
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies (book): https://ifanyonebuildsit.com/
Nate Soares on Twitter/X: https://x.com/So8res?lang=en
My books:
Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un
Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating
Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com
Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast
#intotheimpossible #briankeating #AIrisk #aisafety #artificialintelligence #superintelligence #NateSoares #MIRI #podcast
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Michael Shermer: The Only Skeptic on the Alien Task Force - #562
2026/07/15
Michael Shermer just joined the White House’s new UAP task force alongside Avi Loeb. He also has a $1,000 bet with Loeb that we won’t find aliens by 2030. Both things are true. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.
Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, author of Truth, and one of the most consistent voices for evidence-based thinking in public life. He was recruited onto the task force as the devil’s advocate. His job: be the skeptic in the room. He’s not a believer. He’s not even a neutral. He bet $1,000 against it.
Shermer has been following the UFO story since the early ’90s. He’s heard every disclosure promise. He’s still waiting. What changed is that now he’s in the room — and his job is to be the hardest person in it to convince.
What you’ll hear:
-Why the post-truth thesis is self-defeating the moment anyone argues for it
What Avi Loeb’s first ground rules reveal about what the task force actually is
-Leslie Kean’s own numbers: 90-95% explained, and what lives in the residue
-Why the extraordinary terrestrial hypothesis collapses under a simple counterfactual
-Brian’s case against the fine-tuning argument and why the universe is poorly tuned
-What Dennett got right about consciousness and why Shermer calls it an impossible problem
Your North Star should be truth. Not ideology, not politics, not religion.
CHAPTERS
00:00 The $1,000 bet with Avi Loeb
00:44 Truth: what it is and what post-truth actually means
03:06 How to change your mind without moving the goalposts
05:30 Base rate neglect and the hedge fund manager who beat the market 15 years in a row
07:00 Brian debates a moon landing denier for two hours
07:18 Shermer joins the White House UAP task force
08:20 Avi Loeb’s first meeting: no stories, no new physics
09:46 The advocatus diaboli: Shermer’s job on the team
11:06 Interdimensional beings, sentient plasmoids, and the escalation ladder
13:00 Grusch, classified claims, and why Ana Paulina Luna can’t hide behind a SCIF
15:08 Sagan’s dragon: the invisible, cold-blooded, levitating problem
17:00 Leslie Kean’s own numbers: 90-95% explained
18:16 The New Jersey UAP flap: drones, Venus, and Starlink
19:50 What lives in the 5% nobody explains
20:06 The extraordinary terrestrial hypothesis and why it fails
21:38 Nobody stays centuries ahead of anyone else
23:26 The residue of anomalies problem
23:44 James Webb, early galaxies, and whether the Big Bang is in trouble
25:56 Epistemology: different tools, different truths
26:54 Literal vs. mythological truth in religion
35:00 Why Jews don’t accept the resurrection
36:14 String theory, Brian Greene, and the fine-tuning argument
44:28 Brian’s case: the universe is poorly tuned
49:58 Flat Earthers, moon landing deniers, and the ego of secret knowledge
57:40 Daniel Dennett, free will, and consciousness as an impossible problem
01:00:00 What’s it like to be something else? The wrong question.
Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating
Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join
Featured Guest:
Michael Shermer website: https://www.michaelshermer.com
Skeptic magazine: https://www.skeptic.com
Truth (book): https://michaelshermer.com/truth-what-it-is-how-to-find-it-why-it-still-matters/
Michael Shermer on Twitter/X: https://x.com/michaelshermer?lang=en
My books:
Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un
Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating
Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com
Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast
#intotheimpossible #briankeating #MichaelShermer #UAP #UFO #aliens #skeptic #science #podcast
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Podcast reviews
Read Into the Impossible With Brian Keating podcast reviews
Sharon Sagan 2026/08/19
A fun listen!
This isn’t just for eggheads! Brian has a great personality and finds the humor and common interest in a even the most esoteric areas of study! Try it...
WendyQuilter 2026/06/18
Physicist-Human
Think like a physicist and wonder like a human…and always talk to people who have different view points. His podcasts are always at least interesting ...
Anotsofunnyguy 2026/04/15
from last to first in class
Brian, you better be right about all this God stuff
J.B.1982 2025/12/24
Thanks!
Thank you for sharing your experience, knowledge, and the time you invest into it!
EFG2039 2025/11/12
Excellent Show
Dr.Keating has done a fantastic job of rebutting those nonsensically ridiculous moon landing conspiracists.
SoulLove77 2025/11/04
Get back on Joe!
Candace is a fool. I realize the moon landing conspiracy stuff is sometimes fun and it keeps the interest level on science up in a way but some peopl...
Nash 322 2025/10/02
Debunking moon was a joke
Almost none of the claims addressed were accurate. B never said anything about magneto field. He said Van Allen radiation belts! Also 250 degrees un...
pseudopersona 2025/09/17
Great guests, great discussions, obnoxious blowhard host.
I love listening to physicists and cosmologists discuss the fascinating discoveries and issues of the day, unfortunately roughly 75% of every show is ...
Beldar88 2025/09/02
Interesting
Having ads that just pop in randomly, sometimes in the middle of a sentence, is unacceptable.
Truth Huffer 2025/08/21
Too many ads
Brilliant guests, fascinating discussion, WAY too many ads.
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